Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the real situation of teachers’ oral feedback in middle school English class and students’ attitudes on English teachers’ oral feedback. The purpose of the research is to provide valuable guidance for the application of teachers’ oral feedback in English teaching in middle school.
1.2. Background of the Study
Teachers’ feedback plays an important role in classroom interaction. Since 1970s, more and more studies have been carried out on teachers’ feedback.
Many scholars emphasize the importance of teachers’ feedback, for example, Keller (1987) states that the practice with feedback is “one of the most powerful components in the learning process” (1987). “The ways that most people in a formal learning environment identify their competence are through feedback", declared by Ginsberg and Wlodkowski (2000), after many related studies on feedback. Recently, there have been an increasing number of studies investigating the strategies that teachers use in giving feedback, their stances and perspectives, and the different effects of feedback on various aspects of L2 (second language) acquisition.
2. Literature Review
"Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement, but this impact can be either positive or negative."(John Hattie and Helen Timperley, 2007)
A good feedback can arouse students’ curiosity and thirst for knowledge, help them build up self-confidence, and enlighten their thought. An improper feedback may hold students back, decrease their interest in learning and discourage them.
2.1. Definition of feedback
Teachers’ classroom feedback mainly refers to the responses given by the teacher to what learners produce in the classroom. It is an integral part of classroom communication. It has various forms of expression, such as recognition, denial, error correction, or silence.
From different perspectives, feedback has been defined differently. From the perspective of FLA (foreign language acquisition), "Feedback is information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance" (Penny Ur, 2000). From the perspective of interaction, feedback is defined as "response to efforts by the learner to communicate" (Ellis, 1985). According to Wiseman and Hunt (2001), teachers’ feedback is "information provided to students by teachers, generally in oral or written form that lets them know the status of their learning process".
Chaudron (1977) defined “corrective feedback” as “any reaction of the teacher which clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learner utterance”.
Different scholars have offered different definitions of teachers’ feedback. This paper focuses on teachers’ oral feedback in middle school English class. In this paper, the working definition of oral feedback is: the verbal information that is offered to learners about their performance in classrooms.
2.2. Classification of oral feedback
Feedback can be classified differently. The types of teachers’ responses may have important influences on students’ learning progress.
Vigil and Oller (1976) distinguished two types of feedback: cognitive feedback as to the use of the linguistic code, and affective feedback as to whether the learners’ contributions are valuable and worthwhile. According to the function, teachers’ feedback is usually pided into two types: positive feedback and negative feedback (Nunan, 1991). The former one generally means the praise teachers giving learners. There are simple praise such as "good", "well-done", "right", repetition plus praise, and praise plus remark. It can not only help students learn better, but also improve classroom interaction. The latter one generally refers to error correction. Nunan believed that positive feedback is more effective than negative feedback. Schwartz and White (2000) defined two types of feedback: formative and summative feedback. The former one is the assessment during the learning process in order to improve student attainment. And the latter one is the assessment focusing on the educational outcomes. According to Cullen (2002), feedback could be pided into evaluative feedback and discoursal feedback. Zhou Xing (2002) differentiate five types of feedback: simple and general praise, praise and remarks, repetition and praise, asking other students, guidance to self-correction. In the opinion of Zhao Xiaohong (2008), positive feedback includes simple praise, praise and remarks, and elicitation; negative feedback includes implicit corrections and explicit corrections. 初中英语课堂教师口头反馈现状调查(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_50499.html